The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Increasingly, public communications networks are being built and expanded using various packet technologies, including Ethernet technology for metropolitan-area networks (MANs) and wide-area networks (WANs). An end-to-end bridged network used by an organization may span portions of the networks of multiple independent organizations (e.g., backbone carriers, access providers) as well as portions of its own networks. Each of these portions of the network may restrict management access to each other's equipment, which complicates operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) of the end-to-end network.